Melinda is an urban planner and a certified, registered yoga teacher. She brings yoga to under-served populations in her work with Yoga Gangsters, for at-risk and traumatized youth, and Connected Warriors, which offers free yoga to veterans. She plans a future article for CLO on the connections between chess and yoga.

The Nationals adventures for one Mom and Son team continued yet another year. All parents can pick up valuable perspective from stories shared by a veteran Chess Mom in her poignant and occasionally amusing writings. Through ups and downs, we sometimes need a reminder of the many "skill sets" that a young chess player develops: "focus, creativity, extraordinary strategic thinking, sportsmanship, how to shake off a devastating loss." Thanks Mom! --Michael Aigner

A bit long, but an interesting insight of a chess parent who sees more at the tournament than simply chess. She sees how chess has help her son develop in other ways and perhaps… she is deriving as much pleasure from being a chess parent as her son is playing chess.-- Daaim Shabazz

- I enjoyed this tournament report. I liked the perspective from the "Chess Mom", especially. It was really nice to see the point of view from one of the people who rarely gets the credit they deserve-Tim Brennan

Another excellent article with pictures from the event and from the city itself. This was very well written and was fun to read as well as instructive. I thought I got a feel for what it was like to be at the event. -GM Ben Finegold